Page 3 of The World Outside My Window

‘Don’t be daft.’ Debbie goes quiet for a minute but Laura knows she’s still there. ‘Will you let me know when he gets back?’

‘Course I will.’

‘And, Lau?’

‘Yes?’

‘Try not to drink too much, promise?’

Laura looks down at her empty glass, at the half-full bottle next to it, and replies: ‘Guide’s honour.’

When she replaces the handset she stares at it for a while, willing it to ring. Just like when she was watching out of the window, she makes deals with herself. Maybe if she stares at it for thirty seconds, it will ring, and she’ll hear Jim’s voice, telling her everything is okay. A minute; two minutes.

Eventually she gives up and splashes some more vodka into her tumbler, knocking it back in one. She never used to be much of a drinker. Back when she met Jim she only really drank when she went dancing with her friends, and even then she’d mainly stick to wine or the occasional gin and tonic. She wasn’t a lonely drunk, stuck at home knocking back vodka night after night, passing out rather than falling asleep. But ever since the attack she’s felt like a broken window, pieces of herself lying splintered and discarded on the ground, and as though booze is the only thing that can start to patch those pieces back together again, however ragged and makeshift the repair job is.

Who cares if it’s a temporary solution, if it helps for a few moments?

She snatches up the bottle, refills her glass and takes them both out into the hallway. She hurries past the front door and runs up the stairs, stumbling as she reaches the top, almost spilling the drink from her glass. She takes the last few steps more carefully, and heads into their bedroom. The curtains are drawn in here, the same as every other room, and it’s dim, barely any light filtering through the heavy fabric. She slams the bottle and glass on her bedside table with a crack.

A bath. She’ll take a bath. Perhaps by the time she’s run it, Jim will be home. She’ll tell him how worried she was, and he’ll laugh at her indulgently, and say, ‘Oh, Lau, you’re such a worry wart,’ and she’ll wonder why she ever felt this tense and panicked in the first place.

She sticks the plug in and sets the taps running, tipping in bubble bath. As she waits for the bath to fill she thinks about where Jim might be.

It’s Thursday, which means he usually gets home at 6.23 p.m. She knows this because she waits for him like an eager puppy every week, and is overwhelmingly grateful the minute he walks through the door. Jim spends three, sometimes four days a week working away in Leeds and, when Laura was her old self, back when they first met, this wasn’t a big deal. Yes, she missed him. Yes, she wished he weren’t away so much. But she understood he loved his job and she kept herself busy when he was away, seeing her friends and working longer hours to fill the time until he was back. When he was home, he was attentive and loving, which made the time apart bearable.

Now, though, the days when she’s alone stretch on endlessly like a piece of elastic, the time between Jim leaving and returning spent waiting, counting down the hours, the minutes, until he walks back through the door at 6.23 p.m. on a Thursday evening. Debbie tells her it’s no way to live but her life has been this way for so long now she has no idea if she’s capable of doing anything about it. Or even if she wants to.

She turns off the taps, walks back into the bedroom to get her drink, then lowers herself into the scalding water. She ignores the scream of her skin as the water turns it from pale milk to a fiery red, keeps going until her ears are submerged, and she feels instantly cocooned, a sense of safety enveloping her as the steam spirals upwards and the tension slips away from her shoulders. The sounds of the house; the clunk of the central heating, the ticks and buzzes and hums of various domestic appliances, as well as the deadened thunk of her heart beating, are muffled through the steaming water, and she closes her eyes. Maybe when she opens them again Jim will be standing there, smiling at her. She tests it by opening one eye slightly, but there’s no one there and her heart plummets to her stomach. The sense of terror that something terrible has happened to her husband is creeping closer, like a monster in a horror film.

These are the facts. One: Jim is never late. In fact he prides himself on his timekeeping, and if he is going to be late he will always let her know.

Two: Jim knows how much she needs him, how much she relies on him coming home after three days away, and would never just leave her wondering.

Three: Jim knows she’s completely alone. She doesn’t have any friends apart from Debbie, who lives thirty miles away with her family and can’t just drop everything to come and see her, and she doesn’t know any of the neighbours in the street they’ve lived in for the last seven months.

Four: something has happened to Jim. The certainty hits her like a hammer blow and she sits up suddenly, the water cascading off her body and splashing over the side of the enamel bath, soaking the peeling tiled floor. She stands and clambers out of the bath, wraps herself in a towel and pads, wet-footed, across the carpet, leaving a trail of damp Bigfoot prints across the landing and down the stairs.

She needs to do something.

She needs to find Jim.

She can’t function without him.

She takes another gulp of her drink, then she picks up the phone.

2

THEN – SEPTEMBER 1985

For some people, the tireless pace of a kitchen was too much. But for me, usually shy and quiet and not keen on spending time with strangers, the adrenaline surge I experienced every time I stepped into the restaurant kitchen couldn’t be beaten. Work consumed me, and I loved the rhythm of it; the chopping, the sizzling, the rush of heat as another dish was cooked to perfection. I felt so lucky to be Head Chef of a restaurant in the city centre at the age of just twenty-six. It was the only place I felt fully in charge, and I ran a tight ship, but I didn’t like interruptions because they ruined the flow. So, when I heard someone calling me in the middle of a very busy service one night, I ignored them and assumed they’d give up and go away. But they didn’t, and when I looked up again there was a figure standing beside me, right by my elbow.

I spun round, my face flushed and hot, ready to give them a dressing-down but I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of the handsome man standing beside me, smiling sheepishly. I felt the kitchen walls shift ever so slightly, and the light become a notch brighter as I took in his chiselled cheeks and long lashes.

‘Oh!’ I said, stupidly, my face flushing even more.

‘I’m so sorry.’ He shuffled his feet as I worried how terrible my hair must look beneath my chef’s hat.

‘What are—?’

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